: Possessed nouns constituting possessive clauses in Emérillon (Tupi-Guarani)

This paper examines an unusual type of nominal predication in Emerillon, a Tupi-Guarani language spoken in French Guiana. This construction, exactly parallel to that of a possessed noun, is made of a person marker plus a noun. However, it is used as a predicate with a possessive meaning. Thus the form "my hammock" by itself can mean "I have a hammock". We hypothesize that this type of nominal predicates is in fact an existential construction. This is confirmed by the optional presence of the existential copula. However, in absence of the copula, the nominal predicate takes on all the predicative morphology (negation, TAM...), just like a verb does. This makes it more difficult to think in terms of a zero existential copula